Review: plewds

Kathrine Payne | Photo by Yellow Belly

plewds is a word that comes from comic book land, denoting those graphic beads of sweat you see come off a cartoon character when under emotional distress. You can see why Kathrine Payne has named their one-person show – which has been brought to Summerhall through the Mary Dick Award 2024 – after this. It is an apt name for a show that mixes heady and animated comedy mixed with emotional pathos and queered grief. Yet sometimes there seems to be real-life plewds jumping off Payne’s face, their nervousness present throughout as they throw everything and the kitchen sink at the wall, to varying degrees of success. 

The show’s heart is based around a relationship gone bad. We see the main character – a queer clown-like figure – participate in therapy sessions with an unnamed and disembodied voice. Payne explores the relationship through a variety of pop culture guises which they play: a frenetic dating show host, a clueless detective, and an unimpressed director. They replay and unpick this relationship in all its messiness and paradoxes through these characters. There is a lot going on and the narrative structure and pacing of the piece really sags under the weight of all the ideas brought to the table. 

Payne brings impassioned gusto to the show and there is clearly a lot of work put in, including pretty lavish set design. It’s very impressive but they seem to struggle to hold all the strands together, especially in the audience participation which doesn’t really add anything to the show, nor does Payne seem to enjoy. 

plewds has many ideas which are interesting around modern queer life, the manifestation of grief, and the (non)binaries of good and evil. Yet it struggles to hold them all together and to create semblance, buckling under its own heft.